Summer 2022 Course Descriptions

200-Level English Courses

ENG 202 Writing About Literature 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. BCOM.

CRN: 30233 Day/Time: MTW 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Anderson, Katherine

Emily Dickinson once wrote, “Art – is a house that tries to be haunted.” But what does it mean to be haunted? This section of ENG 202 will consider the formal and thematic hauntings present in a variety of literary genres. We’ll think critically about what constitutes a “haunting,” and how all literature, in its formal elements such as character and setting, is haunted by its ancestors. The texts for the course each engage with the topic in different ways and in different forms, including short stories, films, and, of course, novels. The hauntings in question may relate to individuals, to families, or to the nation. They may be “literal,” referring to spirits or specters (or monsters), or they may describe a figurative psychological state. Through our inquiry we will examine the hauntings that drive both our culture and our fictions, as well as the accompanying fear, grief and guilt, because, as Jack Kerouac put it, “if you're not haunted by something … you're not interested or even involved.” 

This course fulfills the BCOM General University Requirement (GUR). BCOM GURs develop your ability to generate, assess, and express ideas accurately, clearly, and creatively in a range of modalities and using a variety of technologies. Communication is the foundation of your academic education and essential for your professional and personal success. Through ongoing learning and practice in different contexts, good communicators acquire skilled expertise in designing information effectively in different ways for different audiences. In addition to introducing you to the college-level study of literature, this course will help you cultivate reading and writing skills that can be applied to various critical situations. In our discussions of both literature and composition, we’ll focus on the relationship between form and function: the ways in which what is said connects to how it’s communicated (and why this matters).  

Warning: This course incorporates mature themes. Some of the texts we’ll read may include representations of graphic violence and/or sexuality. Literature exists in part to help us process and cope with human crises, trauma, and atrocities, and in asking us to confront these things, it also actively encourages our empathy with and for others. Please be certain you are able to read, watch, and discuss this kind of material and do so in a mature, respectful way. 

Course texts will likely include: 

• Jack Finney, Invasion of the Body Snatchers  
• Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House  
• Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching  
• Jordan Peele, Get Out (film) 
• Don Siegel, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (film) 
• Robert Wise, The Haunting (film) 

Short stories from authors such as: Nana Kwame Ajei-Brenyah, Margaret Atwood, Jennifer Egan, Carlos Fuentes, Gish Jen, Nam Le, Ursula Le Guin, Edgar Allan Poe, and Zadie Smith.

300-Level English Courses

ENG CRN: 301 Writing and the Public 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. WP3.

CRN: 31011 Day/Time: TR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Lucchesi, Andrew John

This course examines comics and other graphic texts in the context of public writing. On the one hand, we will think about how comics work as texts: how they blend image and materiality to create original, aesthetic experiences. Which is to say, we’ll talk about what makes comics cool. On the other hand, we will consider how comics work rhetorically to make things happen in the world. We will think about fan cultures that power the comics industry. We will also look at the ways comics get used in a wide range of cultural settings, including comics used in sexual education guides and other educational and community-engaged discourses. Which is all to say, we’ll talk about what makes comics important. 

Course format: 

This is a hybrid course that meets two days a week in person, Tuesdays and Thursdays 8am-9:50am. The rest of our work is asynchronous. Most of our in-person sessions will be spent doing drawing activities, group work projects, or trips to the university archives and special collections. In between class sessions, you will frequently record videos or write discussion posts. 

You do not have to have any artistic background at all to take this course. You simply need to be willing to try. You will do two major comics projects, one small one by yourself and one larger one with a group. We will mostly work by hand, although we will also have digital comics-making tools available as well. 

Here are the required materials for this class: 

• Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (new $24, used from $7)
• Lynda Barry’s Making Comics (new $20)
• Laguardia by Nnedi Okorafor and Tana Ford (digital edition, $12)
• Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro (digital, issue #4, $4)
• The Pervert by Remy Boydell and Michelle Perez (new $18)
• One pack of 4x6 inch index cards and several PaperMate brand black flare pens

Note that several of these texts include portrayals of sex, nudity, and discussions of trauma. We will contextualize and reflect on these elements of the texts, but I wanted to give you fair warning.

 

ENG CRN: 302 Technical Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. WP3.

CRN: 30136 Day/Time: MTWR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Forsberg, Geri

English 302 is the English department’s introductory 300-level workshop course in technical writing. It is for juniors and seniors. It is a 5-credit writing proficiency course. English 302 emphasizes the writer-reader relationship in a variety of nonacademic writing situations. Students learn to identify their audience, develop objectives, organize the content of their documents and revise documents for readability. Students write and design a resume, letters, memos, a proposal, a formal report, an infographic, and a visual presentation. Students also learn to work in small breakout groups, collaborate on writing, and give peer feedback. The final project in this course is a professional portfolio which provides examples of your strongest work. When you have completed this course, you should be ready to write in the professional world. 

CRN: 30151 Day/Time: MTWR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Bell, Michael

In this section of English 302 you’ll develop your skill in generating reader-centered documents that work: documents that do things as well as say things, performing specific functions for specific kinds of readers. Given that so much of our culture now communicates and conducts its business in the visual realm, your work in the course will be focused almost as much on document design as written language. Through this work you will gain an understanding of how all the elements of a professional reader-centered document work together to communicate within specific contexts, for specific audiences.

English 302 is not simply a skills-acquisition course however. It’s also a course about ideas. We will use technical communication as a field in which to conduct analytic inquiry appropriate to study in the humanities. The course is organized around a sequence of projects focusing on a general aspect of professional communication, but all of them will work within a guiding framework. 

This summer the analytic component of the course will take us into a study of games and the culture surrounding them: both table-top and video games. As a student of the course, you will be teaming with other students on a series of documents, presentations, and prototypes leading to the development of an original tabletop game. The design of your game will be based in part on contemporary game studies and critiques. Every stage of this inquiry will generate documents in accord with the guidelines of effective technical and professional communication. (And yes, we will be playing games in class!)

You will emerge from the course with the ability to respond effectively to the requirements of technical communication. You will also have a complex understanding of what is becoming a vital aspect of our contemporary culture.

This is a fully in-person, active, lab-based course based largely on creative collaboration and making.  

ENG 310 Seminar: The Long 19th Century 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. If you have taken ENG 310 or ENG 320, do not take ENG 310. Cross-listed with ENG 320.

CRN: 30630 Day/Time: MTWR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Wise, Christopher

The 19th century, which some have dubbed “the golden age of racism,” was the apex of the era of expanding European capital and imperialism. Already wealthy nations like England, France, Holland, and other powers increased their wealth multifold by conquering and colonizing lands belonging to the peoples of Africa, India, South America, Asia, and other places. Though it is not possible to study every nation’s literature during this era, it is possible to study particular cases in order to gain a better sense of what took place during this time. Our course in 19th Century literature will therefore focus on the 19th century literature of France and West Africa during the era of imperial conquest. We will read the literature of Europeans who explored West Africa and produced the new literary genre of “The Timbuktu Narrative,” and we will also read the literature of those who stayed home and merely enjoyed the opulent wealth that was produced by the looting and plundering that took place. In contrast to European travelers’ experience of West Africa, we will also take a look at some of the literature that African peoples themselves wrote at this time. Finally, we will also discuss Edward W. Said’s Orientalism with special reference to the figure of Scheherazade from Sir Richard Burton’s translation of The Thousand and One Nights, Vaslav Nijinsky and Sergei Diaghilev’s popular ballet Scheherazade. 

Course Requirements 

Students will write a formal paper of 4-5 pages, an essay exam, and other reading-focused assignments. Although this is a six-week class, students will also have the option of completing final writing assignments in eight weeks. 

Texts: 

• Sir Richard Burton (trans), The Thousand and One Nights (excerpts) 
• Nijinsky / Diaghilev, Scheherazade   
• Jean-Michel Dijan, The Manuscripts of Timbuktu 
• Mahmadu Tyam, The Life of Al Hajj Umar 
• Gustave Flaubert, Three Tales 
• Angel Flores (ed), The Anchor Anthology of French Poetry: From Nerval to Valéry in English Translation   
• Emile Zola, The Masterpiece 
• Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way 

ENG 311 Seminar: The 20-21st Century 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. Do not take ENG 311 if you have already taken ENG 321 or 311. Cross-listed with ENG 321.

CRN: 30448 Day/Time: MTW 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Anderson, Katherine

War does more than unleash violence; it also disrupts everyday life and social norms. In times of severe crisis, societies undo themselves and are remade. War can make progressive social changes that were formerly unthinkable possible or even necessary. In this course, we’ll explore how humans wrestle with war and its reverberating effects through literature. We’ll consider pressing questions such as: What does it mean to possess the right to human dignity or the right to citizenship? How are individual, community, and national identities shaped not only by violence and atrocities, but by subsequent memory, trauma, dislocation, moral injury, loss, or even gain? How do our individual intersectional embodiments of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability, class, and religious belief shape the way we experience war? What does it mean to live an ethical life in the face of violence and social upheaval – can we? Furthermore, we’ll ask what representing war does to the artistic act of creation itself. Why try to recreate the experience of war and social upheaval? At what point does the attempt to convey violence become an act of violence in itself?   

In exploring the ethics of creating and consuming representations of war and its effects, we’ll investigate some of the specific literary movements and innovations that have emerged over the last century in relation to significant conflicts, from World War I to the so-called War on Terror. Our investigation of Anglophone literature via forms such as modernism, postmodernism, the graphic novel, and the post-9/11 novel will consider the complex and dynamic relationship among these national and transnational literatures, and the place of modernism and postmodernism in a global literary geography of violence and social change. 

Content Warning: As the course topic indicates, this course incorporates mature themes. Some of the texts we’ll read will include representations of graphic violence and may also include graphic or violent representations of sexuality. Literature exists in part to help us process and cope with human crises, trauma, and atrocities, and in asking us to confront these things, it also actively encourages our empathy with and for others. Please be certain you are able to read, watch, and discuss this kind of material and do so in a mature, respectful way. 

Course Objectives: 

1. To fulfil your Literature and Culture Requirement, this course is intended to do two things:  
2. Provide you the opportunity to engage in deep analysis of the literature that emerged during a specific historical period: in our case, the 20th- and 21st-centuries.  

Prepare you for advanced work in upper-division literary studies. We will continue honing your ability to “read” and to “write”: to evaluate written (and visual/audible) information both critically and aesthetically, to recognize and scrutinize the aspects of creation (whether filmic or textual) that are, by definition or convention, “literary,” and to develop a critical vocabulary that enables you to articulate your ideas in more precise, complicated, informed, and interesting ways. Our sustained attention to the habit and craft of close reading will simultaneously attend to some of the major literary movements and historical events of the past century. 

The texts for this course are not yet finalized, but will likely be drawn from the following list: 

• Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now (film) 
• Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk 
• Mohsin Hamid, Exit West 
• Chinelo Okparanta, Under the Udala Trees 
• Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Flee (film) 
• Kamila Shamsie, Burnt Shadows 
• Art Spiegelman, Maus II 
• Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five  
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway 

Short stories or excerpts from authors such as: Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, Radclyffe Hall, Le Ly Hayslip, Nam Le, Toshio Mori, Tim O’Brien, Zadie Smith, and Susan Sontag 

ENG 313 Critical Theories & Prac I 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202

CRN: 30365 Day/Time: MTWR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Cushman, Jeremy

The thing about engaging with what gets called ‘theory’ or ‘philosophy’ is that it gives us the chance to jump into a pretty heated and certainly long-running squabble. And it’s a squabble that, whether you’re currently conscious of it or not, shapes how you understand and respond to the worlds in which you act. This is a squabble that, to say the least, matters.

So the whole point to our time together this summer is all about giving you the chance to work out the possible ways ‘theory’ or ‘philosophy’ can help you make different, maybe even a more useful kinds of sense of the differing ‘texts’ you encounter. That is, I want the class to help you practice reading all the varied kinds of material that matters to you across and with this ancient squabble called ‘theory’—material like Marvel movies, long emails from the university’s president, short stories, intimidating healthcare documentation, a Netflix series, and so on. Theory, even (and I think especially) theory that predates Christianity and the Enlightenment, has an awful lot to say to us about the critical ways we make meaning out of the ‘texts’ or material that matters to us.

So we’ll jump into this squabble around 500 BCE, and try to make some sense of the people who get called the ‘Pre-socratics,’ or the Sophists. We don’t have much from these writers and thinkers, just torn fragments of text and notes that some of their students left behind. But what we do have is wonderfully weird and sometimes profound. Their work seemingly anticipates what much of our own squabbles about truth, justice, and living in right relationship with the others and with the natural world.

Then we’ll turn to philosophers who, many say, have structured what we call the Western Tradition: Plato and his student Aristotle. The squabble between the Sophists and Plato/Aristotle is legit. So we’ll dwell here for a bit before turning to people that began to transform this squabble into wildly influentially ideas about political institutions, and who used it to invent lasting interpretations of Christianity that impact you whether you know it or not.

After that, we’ll quickly (because we don’t have time to go slow) make our way though others that jumped into the squabble as it carried on. These are thinkers, writers, ‘theorists,’ and ‘philosophers’ that, while you’ve maybe never read them, they’ve helped shape your underlying understanding of identity, reason, love, religion, history, and other giant conceptions that allow us to interpret our world one way rather than another. 

Texts: There’s no required texts to buy for the course because our original sources are in the ‘public domain,’ and I’ll be sending along the more contemporary essays about these texts.

Class Structure:

• Monday: You’ll get an assigned text from one or two of our ‘theorists.’ You’ll also get a recorded, podcast-style, ‘lecture’ from me about that week’s ‘theorists.’ (Plus, I'll run an optional meeting when most people are available)
• Wednesday: You’ll write responses to my prompts about that week’s reading and my ‘lecture’ (Plus, I'll run an optional meeting when most people are available)
• Thursday: Early on in the class, I’ll send along examples of how to practice reading differing ‘texts’ or material across and with the ‘theorist’ and ‘philosophers’ that we’re engaging. About a quarter of the way through the class, I’ll start sending ‘texts’ and a prompt for you to do this kind of work on your own. That work will be ‘due’ the following Monday. Then it all starts again.
   

ENG 320 Survey: The Long 19th Century 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. If you have taken ENG 310 or ENG 320, do not take ENG 320. Cross-listed with ENG 310.

CRN: 30609 Day/Time: MTWR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Wise, Christopher

The 19th century, which some have dubbed “the golden age of racism,” was the apex of the era of expanding European capital and imperialism. Already wealthy nations like England, France, Holland, and other powers increased their wealth multifold by conquering and colonizing lands belonging to the peoples of Africa, India, South America, Asia, and other places. Though it is not possible to study every nation’s literature during this era, it is possible to study particular cases in order to gain a better sense of what took place during this time. Our course in 19th Century literature will therefore focus on the 19th century literature of France and West Africa during the era of imperial conquest. We will read the literature of Europeans who explored West Africa and produced the new literary genre of “The Timbuktu Narrative,” and we will also read the literature of those who stayed home and merely enjoyed the opulent wealth that was produced by the looting and plundering that took place. In contrast to European travelers’ experience of West Africa, we will also take a look at some of the literature that African peoples themselves wrote at this time. Finally, we will also discuss Edward W. Said’s Orientalism with special reference to the figure of Scheherazade from Sir Richard Burton’s translation of The Thousand and One Nights, Vaslav Nijinsky and Sergei Diaghilev’s popular ballet Scheherazade. 

Course Requirements 

Students will write a formal paper of 4-5 pages, an essay exam, and other reading-focused assignments. Although this is a six-week class, students will also have the option of completing final writing assignments in eight weeks. 

Texts: 

• Sir Richard Burton (trans), The Thousand and One Nights (excerpts) 
• Nijinsky / Diaghilev, Scheherazade   
• Jean-Michel Dijan, The Manuscripts of Timbuktu 
• Mahmadu Tyam, The Life of Al Hajj Umar 
• Gustave Flaubert, Three Tales 
• Angel Flores (ed), The Anchor Anthology of French Poetry: From Nerval to Valéry in English Translation   
• Emile Zola, The Masterpiece 
• Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way 

ENG 321 Survey: The 20-21st Centuries 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101. The seminar and survey time periods are not repeatable. If you have taken ENG 311 or ENG 321, do not take ENG 321. Cross-listed with ENG 311.

CRN: 30631 Day/Time: MTW 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Anderson, Katherine J.

War does more than unleash violence; it also disrupts everyday life and social norms. In times of severe crisis, societies undo themselves and are remade. War can make progressive social changes that were formerly unthinkable possible or even necessary. In this course, we’ll explore how humans wrestle with war and its reverberating effects through literature. We’ll consider pressing questions such as: What does it mean to possess the right to human dignity or the right to citizenship? How are individual, community, and national identities shaped not only by violence and atrocities, but by subsequent memory, trauma, dislocation, moral injury, loss, or even gain? How do our individual intersectional embodiments of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability, class, and religious belief shape the way we experience war? What does it mean to live an ethical life in the face of violence and social upheaval – can we? Furthermore, we’ll ask what representing war does to the artistic act of creation itself. Why try to recreate the experience of war and social upheaval? At what point does the attempt to convey violence become an act of violence in itself?   

In exploring the ethics of creating and consuming representations of war and its effects, we’ll investigate some of the specific literary movements and innovations that have emerged over the last century in relation to significant conflicts, from World War I to the so-called War on Terror. Our investigation of Anglophone literature via forms such as modernism, postmodernism, the graphic novel, and the post-9/11 novel will consider the complex and dynamic relationship among these national and transnational literatures, and the place of modernism and postmodernism in a global literary geography of violence and social change. 

Content Warning: As the course topic indicates, this course incorporates mature themes. Some of the texts we’ll read will include representations of graphic violence and may also include graphic or violent representations of sexuality. Literature exists in part to help us process and cope with human crises, trauma, and atrocities, and in asking us to confront these things, it also actively encourages our empathy with and for others. Please be certain you are able to read, watch, and discuss this kind of material and do so in a mature, respectful way. 

Course Objectives: 

1. To fulfil your Literature and Culture Requirement, this course is intended to do two things:  
2. Provide you the opportunity to engage in deep analysis of the literature that emerged during a specific historical period: in our case, the 20th- and 21st-centuries.  

Prepare you for advanced work in upper-division literary studies. We will continue honing your ability to “read” and to “write”: to evaluate written (and visual/audible) information both critically and aesthetically, to recognize and scrutinize the aspects of creation (whether filmic or textual) that are, by definition or convention, “literary,” and to develop a critical vocabulary that enables you to articulate your ideas in more precise, complicated, informed, and interesting ways. Our sustained attention to the habit and craft of close reading will simultaneously attend to some of the major literary movements and historical events of the past century. 

The texts for this course are not yet finalized, but will likely be drawn from the following list: 

• Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now (film) 
• Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk 
• Mohsin Hamid, Exit West 
• Chinelo Okparanta, Under the Udala Trees 
• Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Flee (film) 
• Kamila Shamsie, Burnt Shadows 
• Art Spiegelman, Maus II 
• Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five  
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway 

Short stories or excerpts from authors such as: Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, Radclyffe Hall, Le Ly Hayslip, Nam Le, Toshio Mori, Tim O’Brien, Zadie Smith, and Susan Sontag 

ENG 347 Studies in Young Adult Lit 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202 or instructor permission.

CRN: 30090 Day/Time: MTWR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Hardman, Pam

In this course we’ll read a diverse array of texts written for young adults. These books all address complex notions about identity, power, race, sexuality, gender, class, love, and voice. We’ll explore the texts from a variety of angles, asking questions of the texts themselves and readers’ responses to the texts. In addition to exploring the books, we’ll think about the histories of childhood and adolescence, and how youth culture is represented.  We’ll address issues of consumerism, popular culture, and technology, looking at their effects on this genre of literature and its target audience. You should expect much intensive reading and lively discussion. 

TEXTS:  may include Gansworth, Apple: (Skin to the Core); Gardner, You’re Welcome, Universe; Higuera,  The Last Cuentista; Tamaki, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me; Zoobi and Salaam, Punching the Air 

ASSIGNMENTS: Reading responses; discussion questions; culminating mixed-media project 

ENG 350 Intro to Creative Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101

CRN: 30084 Day/Time: MTWR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Araki-Kawaguchi, Kiik

As a participant in this course, you will learn through reading, writing, discussing and reflecting. Together, we will examine the fundamental elements of fiction and poetry. In the final weeks of our workshop, we will also examine humor writing and performance. We will explore a diverse body of published works. And, foundational to the workshop process, we will discuss the working drafts by our peers. Above all, we will privilege our writing process and development.

Expect this to be an exciting and challenging course. We will ask big questions and discuss the practical benefits of a creative life. We hope you will develop new ways of thinking, working, writing and communication. We hope you will take risks. For many, this will be their first writing workshop. You do not have to write “magnificent” works to do well in this course. You just have to be brave, respectful, and a hard worker.

Participation in a 5-credit course is equivalent to 150 hours of work over the quarter. This will include 4 hours of classroom time weekly (lecture, discussions, workshop) and approximately 10 hours of outside preparation (reading, writing, investigating, reflecting, projects). You are also encouraged to visit me in office hours, attend literary events, and (safely) connect with your peers.

Required learning materials include Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything by Jane Wong, Humor Writing by Bruce A. Goebel, and course handouts. I am also asking that you find access to a portable electronic device that will allow you to listen to a podcast and move simultaneously (e.g. walk or dance).

CRN: 30800 Day/Time: MTWR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: McGuire, Simon

In this course we will explore, discuss, practice and revise forms of poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction. I'll introduce you to exercises in ekphrasis (writing about art), traditional forms, poetry machines and current trends in contemporary poetics (visual poetry, collaborative writing methods, conceptual writing, multilingual pieces.). While we all will work remotely, everyone will be required to participate each week in small group discussion forums to read and responds to assignments and complete attentive peer reviews. This course uses Imaginative Writing (4th ed.) as a main text, and I will offer other documents and sources on Canvas.

ENG 351 Intro to Fiction Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350.

CRN: 30126 Day/Time: MTWR 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Westhoff, Kami

This course is designed to introduce you to the craft and culture of writing fiction as well as the complex world of critique and workshop. We will read established authors from various backgrounds and cultures and study the ways in which they make their writing work through unique use of voice, description, language, dialogue, character development, and experimentation. While reading and studying these authors, you will begin your own journey into fiction writing with the help of various writing exercises and assignments, revision, and most importantly, your imagination and individuality.

ENG 353 Introduction to Poetry Writing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 350.

CRN: 30571 Day/Time: MTWR 10:00-11:50 am Instructor: Shipley, Ely

This course focuses on the practice of reading and writing poetry. While the primary concern is student writing, we work from the basis that in order to become better writers, we also must become better readers. We will explore a range of poetic traditions and contemporary developments and spend the quarter reading, writing, and discussing poetry through focusing on elements such as metaphor, image, rhythm, sound, line, and dramatic tension. You will be responsible for not only submitting original work, but also for offering thoughtful observations to each work discussed. We become better writers through reading, thinking and feeling intensely, learning from our own work, the work of others, and above all, by practicing.

ENG 364 Introduction to Film Studies 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 101

CRN: 30574 Day/Time: MTWR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Prichard, Tony

The course covers the key concepts in film studies. The basic terms and concepts regarding the production, theorization, and analysis of film will be introduced.

The viewings in the course will provide look variety of films throughout the history of cinema in order to practice employing the terms and concepts.
 

400-Level English Courses

ENG 423 MajAuth: 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 202; plus three from: ENG CRN: 307-311, ENG 313, ENG 314, ENG 317-321, ENG 331-347, ENG 364, ENG 371.

CRN: 30572 Day/Time: MTWR 02:00-03:50 pm Instructor: Lester, Mark

Anna Noon, the narrator of Stewart Home’s 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess (2002), remarks at the beginning of the novel that “our attention could be more usefully directed towards Ann Quin” than toward canonical modern writers such as Hemingway, Stein, or Beckett (with whom she has been compared). First published in the 1960s by John Calder and Marion Boyers — noteworthy for their promotion of avant-garde postwar literature — Quin (who died in 1973) had been and continues to be recognized as a stylistically innovative, ‘experimental’ writer. Anna Noon’s comment (Home’s book can be read in part as a tribute to Quin) also indicates, however, that there is something untimely and urgent about her work. Frequently bewildering, at times profoundly unsettling, the subtlety, complexity, and political sensitivity of Quin’s exploration of the poles of delirium and the potential of life is both engaging and transformative. 

In this course, we will read Quin’s  four novels — Berg, Three, Passages, and Tripticks — as well as a number of shorter pieces and critical essays.

ENG 459 Editing and Publishing 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 351, ENG 353 or ENG 354

CRN: 30390 Day/Time: MTWR 08:00-09:50 am Instructor: Magee, Kelly

This class will be split between two kinds of editing and publishing: the production of a zine and the production of a chapbook. Each student will choose a project that fits their interests and write and edit content for it, as well as learn how to perfect, publish, and market content as editors for other writers. As writer-editors, you’ll work collaboratively in Editorial Groups and with other members of the class to solicit creative work, provide feedback, and constructing a final publication packet. You’ll consider and study the market, including your ideal audience, and design a project that speaks to that audience. By the end of the course, you will have had practice editing and revising as writers, content editors, line editors, proofreaders, fact-checkers, marketers, and reviewers. The quarter will culminate in presentations of your final project, either a chapbook proposal packet or zine publication packet. 

ENG 464 Film Stds: 5cr

Notes & Prerequisites: ENG 364 or instructor permission. WP3.

CRN: 30678 Day/Time: T 12:00-01:50 pm Instructor: Dietrich, Dawn

This course explores a range of post-millennial films (2010 and after), characterized by a response to technology’s ability to shape and redefine human subjectivity and identity.  Harkening back to early cinema’s fascination with form, these recent films are distinct, in terms of the ways they utilize film technique and industry conventions to create a highly mediated cinematic experience. Moving beyond conventional narrative construction, these films create an interface between the film text and our daily interactions with smart technology, mobile and GPS systems, and artificial intelligence.   The selected films, from varying levels of commercial cinema, utilize the filmic medium to create affective responses in a variety of contexts—with the goal of breaking down preconceived notions about how human subjectivity and identity are shifting in our current age of ubiquitous computing as well as how gender/sexuality studies and critical race theory have reframed the cultural imaginary of “the film subject.”   

Specifically, the movies experiment with film form and conventions to develop material metaphors that demonstrate a form of visual argumentation, mediated relationships between human and non-human actors, and the extension of the human sensorium into virtual strata.  Moving beyond the optical sensation of film, many of these movies highlight the affective experience of watching film, including the haptic responses that come from an embodied perspective of a historically situated subject.  We will look at reception spaces in an expanded sense—from physical spaces dependent upon projectors and screens to “virtual spaces” that come from fluid immersion in TV, laptop, or handheld devices.  Highly attuned to the embodied experience of diverse viewers, these films privilege the body, senses, perceptive modalities, and tactile, affective, and sensory motor perceptions in deeply creative ways.  Thus, the course focuses on new films in the context of affective and new materialist theories. 

Content Warning: Some of the films in the course deal explicitly with physical violence, sexual assault, racism, abortion, and sexism. I will provide content notes for each film ahead of the screening but talk with me ahead of registering for this class if you want to know what to expect with each film and whether this course will work for you.  

Course Expectations and Evaluation 

In this course, I will be teaching you how to perform media-specific analysis of film and digital video within the post-millennial context. We will be reading contemporary film theory, which attempts to situate our current cultural moment in the larger stream of cinema history; and you will be working with the films closely to provide medium-specific readings of their content and form. I ask that you come to class having viewed the film critically and having read the assigned reading—and then to be willing to share your thoughts, questions, and comments. This is especially important for those parts of the film that may seem difficult, puzzling, or provocative.  It is okay not to have answers. In fact, it is much more useful to explore a film’s complexity or indeterminacy from different and multivalent perspectives than it is to reduce it to a single narrative.  I’m organizing the course like an intimate movie club that gathers regularly for film discussions, which I hope you enjoy!  My goal is to create an informal discussion format where any questions and comments can be asked of the group. This only works, of course, if you’re willing to share your perceptions and your experience of viewing the films, openly--and if you practice active listening when others speak about their interpretations. But, it’s more fun this way . . . . 

In terms of course assignments, you’ll have the opportunity to write three multi-modal blogs during the course--while you also respond to your peers’ blogs with short commentary. You are also invited to shape class discussion by posting on the Graffiti Board for each film—with any questions, comments, or thoughts you had during your viewing.  

Film Screening 

Films will be available for free through streaming links located in Course Reserves on Canvas. 

Selected films from among the following: 

• Her, Spike Jonze (2013) 
• Locke, Stephen Knight (2013) 
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma (2019)  
• Get Out, Jordan Peele (2017) 
• The Rider, Chloë Zhao (2017) 
• Under the Skin, Jonathan Glazer (2013) 
• 13th, Ava DuVernay (2016) 
• Ex Machina, Alex Garland (2015) 
• Only Lovers Left Alive, Jim Jarmusch (2013) 

Required Texts 

• “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” bell hooks (PDF) 
• Film Theory:  An Introduction Through the Senses, Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener (print 
•  book) 
• “Sex in Public,” Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner (PDF) 
• Carnal Thoughts:  Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, Vivian Sobchack (Library e-book)